


Things They Would Not Teach Me of in College

by like_a_raven



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, High School
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-08
Updated: 2012-09-08
Packaged: 2017-11-13 19:45:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/507064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/like_a_raven/pseuds/like_a_raven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam’s senior year: a cute girl in the library, an escape plan in the making, a ghost at the prom. It’s just a perfectly normal high school experience, right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> J, L, and LN were utterly amazing betas.

_I have only come here seeking knowledge,_  
 _Things they would not teach me of in college._

 

It seems to have started with a fee for a lost library book. Or possibly it started with being in the mood for a fight, and the lost library book is just the excuse. All Sam knows is that one moment things are relatively quiet in the Bicentennial High School library, and the next moment, Kevin Zamora is yelling the sorts of things it’s not a good idea to yell at a high school librarian.  
  
Mrs. Grant tells him to wait  _right there_  while she calls the assistant principal. Instead, Kevin waits until she has gone into her office, and then shoves over the bookcase that holds biographies from Madison to Oppenheimer.  
  
Sam is halfway out of his chair before he remembers Dad’s Rules. And somewhere near the top of the list is Thou Shalt Not Call Attention to Thyself at School. (It’s impossible to say exactly what rule tops the list; it changes based on the point Dad is making.) Sam sits back down and watches two of Kevin’s football teammates catch him and try to calm him down.  
  
After that, it all plays out fairly quickly. The assistant principal arrives, and he and Mrs. Grant and Kevin vanish back into her office. And the student library aide rolls a book cart over to the mess and starts picking up the books.  
  
That’s when Sam gets up. Single-handedly stopping an angry linebacker is something that raises eyebrows. But anyone can help pick books up out of the floor.  
  
Besides, she’s cute. And it wouldn’t exactly be inaccurate to say that Sam has been looking for an excuse to talk to her.  
  
“Here, let me help you with that,” he says, and adds stupidly, “They really get a lot of books onto one set of shelves, don’t they?”  
  
She looks up at him, and if she finds this statement as painfully inane as he does, at least she doesn’t let it show. “Yeah, I guess they do. Thanks.”  
  
“I’m Sam.” They’ve haven’t even lived here a month yet, and though Sam is the new kid often enough to know that everyone knows your name long before you know anyone else’s, he still likes to introduce himself. “Sam Winchester.”  
  
“I know,” she says. “I’m Clare Ellison. I’m in your English class.”  
  
He knows. Both those things. “My calculus class, too,” he says, without thinking.  
  
She pauses, a biography of Richard Nixon in her hands, and smiles at him. It’s the sort of smile that makes him think about things that are probably frowned on in a school library. And is probably the reason he has just completely missed whatever she was saying.  
  
“Sorry?” he says.  
  
“I said,” Clare says, “I sit behind you in math, and you always seem so focused on the board and your notes, so I’m surprised you noticed.”  
  
Sam feels the color rising in his face and wishes – not for the first time – that his older brother occasionally told him how to talk to girls, not just how to hook up with them. “Well, um, sometimes I see you come in. When, you know, I get to class first.”  
  
“Oh, right,” Clare says.  
  
“Right,” Sam echoes.  _Idiot_ , he thinks.  
  
“This is going to take forever,” Clare says, looking at the books. “Putting them all back in order and everything.”  
  
“That guy’s a real jerk,” Sam says.  
  
“Kevin? No kidding.” She sighs. “I guess I just have to trust in that whole ‘what goes around comes around’ thing, right? Karma, or something?”  
  
Sam’s not big on karma or fate or destiny, but that’s hardly a topic for a first conversation. “Guess so.”  
  
“So what were you going to do?” Clare asks.   
  
Sam frowns in confusion. He doesn’t  _think_  his mind has been wandering again. “What was I going to do about what?”  
  
“When Kevin pushed the bookcase over. You looked like you were getting up to do something and then—”  
  
“Just startled,” Sam says. “Like a reflex.”  
  
“Oh,” she says. And from the look on her face, whatever question she’s going to ask next is going to be equally awkward.   
  
“So, how come you work in the library?” he asks, cutting off whatever it is before she can get to it.  
  
Clare shrugs. “I found study hall boring, and I wanted something interesting to do with my free period.” She looks at the sprawl of the books. “Be careful what you wish for, huh?”  
  
“Guess so,” Sam says. He’s still debating what to say next when Mrs. Grant comes over.  
  
“Clare, we need you for a moment,” she says.  
  
“All right,” Clare says, picking herself up out of the floor. “Thanks for your help, Sam.”  
  
“Sure. I mean, you’re welcome,” Sam says, and for lack of anything better to do, goes on picking up the books.  
  
He’s been able to tell when someone is watching him since he was nine. So when he turns, he’s not surprised to find a security guard, obviously amused. And there’s something in the man’s smirk that sets Sam’s teeth on edge.  
  
“I don’t suppose you want to help,” Sam says.  
  
The guard’s smirk gets smirkier. “Not my job, buddy,” he says, unwrapping a Snickers bar and leaning back against a sign that reads  _No Food or Drinks_.  
  
“It’s not my job, either,” Sam points out.  
  
“Yeah, but they’d frown on it a lot more if I was the one trying to get into the pants of Miss Bookish But Still Cute there,” he says around a mouth full of chocolate.  
  
Sam feels the color rising to his face again, as the guard begins to laugh, and goes back to shoving books onto the cart.   
  


* * *

  
  
Sam stands in the door to the cafeteria, brown bag lunch in hand, looking around the room. He keeps his shoulders slouched, clinging to the fiction that a little slumping hides the fact that he’s taller than most of his classmates. That it somehow conceals that he’s taller than Dean now, and almost as tall as Dad. That slouching lets him fade unnoticed into the background, here and at home.  
  
He’s about to do what he’s done every day since he got here, and head for the most out-of-the-way empty table he can see, eat his lunch as quickly as he can, and get out. And then someone puts a hand on his arm, and he looks down to see Clare Ellison.  
  
She has the most gorgeous eyes he’s ever seen, a pale clear brown almost like honey. And it takes him a moment to process that she’s just asked him to come and eat lunch with her.   
  
He looks over to the table she’s indicated. There are four other people there, and while Sam recognizes two of them, he can’t remember their names. “Come on,” Clare says, when he hesitates.  
  
“All right,” Sam says. “Thanks.”  
  
“Don’t mention it,” she says. “I remember what it was like to be the new kid. In fact, the only reason I’m not still ‘the new kid’ is that you moved here. We moved here last winter.”   
  
Sam follows her across the cafeteria, and wonders if the invitation is some kind of pay-it-forward thing, or she actually wants  _him_  to come eat lunch with them.  
  
“Sam, this is Jake, Renee, Peter, and Vanessa,” she says, pointing to each in turn. “Everybody, this is Sam.” Sam settles awkwardly onto his seat in the midst of murmured hellos, half-waves, and nods. Cafeteria tables are barely designed for the use of human beings, never mind ones with legs as long as his.  
  
“Peter was just going to tell us a ghost story,” Clare says.   
  
Sam straightens in his seat, forgetting to crouch and stoop, slightly tense and a little too focused. “Yeah?” he asks, and only the practice he’s had with this kind of thing keeps it light.  
  
“Yeah,” Peter says.  
  
“Well, so, go on,” Vanessa says.  
  
“Okay,” says Peter. “Well, apparently, there was this girl who went to school here back when the building was new, right? And she had this boyfriend, and they were all crazy in love with each other, and they were going to get married after graduation and everything. So he got a job so he could buy her a ring. And he had to work the day of the prom, so he told her he’d meet her there, rather than like picking her up and stuff, because he wasn’t going to have a lot of time. Only then there was a storm that night, and he ran off the road on his way here and he died. And she was here, all dressed up and waiting for him, and getting more and more worried.”  
  
Peter pauses, and Vanessa says, “And?”  
  
“And,” Peter says, “eventually, the police showed up and told her what happened. And she was so upset she went straight to the bathroom, the one right beside the gym, and she broke the mirror in her purse and used it to slit her wrists. And now they say she haunts the prom, in her blood-soaked prom dress, and makes sure everyone has a horrible night, just like she did.”  
  
There’s a moment of silence when Peter finishes, that’s broken when Vanessa sighs. “That’s so sad,” she says. “I feel so bad for her.”  
  
Jake laughs. “Come on, Vanessa, it can’t be true.”  
  
“How do you know?”  
  
“Because we all went to the Junior Prom last year, and nothing happened. No bloody ghosts, nobody mysteriously dying, nothing weirder than Brady turning up with Hope. It was just a prom.”  
  
“Maybe she only haunts the Senior Prom,” Vanessa says. “Or maybe she only goes if there’s, like, a good reason.”  
  
“Like what?” Renee demands.  
  
“Oh, you know, like . . .” Vanessa says, and looks around the table for help.  
  
“Like if the prom falls on the anniversary of her death or something,” Clare suggests.  
  
“Right!” Vanessa says. “Only if we don’t know when that was, then we won’t know if this year’s prom—”  
  
“What was her name?” Sam asks.   
  
“No idea,” Peter admits.  
  
“Well,” Sam says, “if she were a real ghost, you’d probably know her name.”  
  
“A ‘real ghost’?” Renee says. “There’s no such thing.”  
  
“Right,” Sam says. “Of course. I just meant, if it had really happened. The school’s only twenty-some years old, right? And the town isn’t that big. So if something like that had actually happened, you’d probably all know about it already, and know the names of the people involved. So I don’t think Vanessa needs to worry about anything happening at prom.”  
  
Everyone takes a moment to process this information, and then Peter says, “Way to ruin a good story, man.”  
  
Sam shrugs, a little sheepish, and the conversation moves on. He doesn’t contribute much else, but he stays until the bell rings, and they all go to their next classes.  
  


* * *

  
  
Dean, Sam knows, or Dad, would have checked a decade’s worth of records and obits and grainy microfilm of the local paper for a girl who killed herself on prom night in the 1970’s. Just to be sure. But the story had all the hallmarks of pure fiction, a story cobbled together from bits of campfire tales and late night movies and imagination. And Sam is tired of ghosts and ghouls and things that go bump in the night.   
  
So he doesn’t look into it, doesn’t mention it, and doesn’t worry about it. He just keeps his head down and his mouth shut and prays that any ghosts in this town will have the decency to stay away until he graduates. Because he’d really rather not move again.  
  
Most people his age measure time in school years, September to June, a summer vacation, repeat. Sam measures in semesters, when he’s lucky. They arrive some place in late August and stay till Christmas break begins. They spend the holiday on the road, settle some place else in January, leave in June. Summers are an endless succession of cheap motel rooms and rent-by-the-week cabins, and no one sane would use the word  _vacation_.  
  
Bicentennial is Sam’s ninth high school. He picked up an extra when they moved abruptly in October of his sophomore year. He’s never figured out exactly why. Given the nature of the looks and silence between Dean and Dad as they left town that night, Sam’s willing to bet whatever had happened was his brother’s fault.   
  
That’s probably why he has never asked for the details, and tried not to complain too much about the soccer team and the maybe-could-have-been-a-girlfriend he left without warning or explanation. But it was the last time he tried to join a team, or actually date someone. Even the shallow roots the Winchesters put down can hurt like hell when he has to pull them up.   
  
The pattern of his life has shifted slightly since Dean finished high school. Dad is away even more, which isn’t really a bad thing, given the way he and Sam tend to fight. Dean goes with him more, too, leaving Sam alone for the first time in his life. Dean occasionally handles something on his own. And even when he is in town, he spends time working – pick up mechanic work and odd jobs. The kinds that come with payment in cash and no questions asked.  
  
Sam knows Dean and Dad are both counting down the weeks until he finishes high school, and they can spend all their time on the road. He has occasionally wondered if Dad would even be willing to stick around and let him graduate if there were much more than a month between his eighteenth birthday and the end of high school.  
  
The idea terrifies him more than anything they’ve ever hunted. Days and weeks and  _years_  blurring into a meaningless haze of fighting and blood and silver bullets, of diner food and uncomfortable mattresses and power chords, of fear and pain and rootlessness.  
  
He has stopped trying to explain this, though. When he did, Dad yelled and Dean got the pinched, helpless look he always gets when his brother and his father fight. Sam doesn’t give a damn about the yelling, but the look bothers him.   
  
So the arguments with Dad are mere skirmishes most of the time, now. Tempers flare up when Sam wants to skip training to study, or when Dad doesn’t like his attitude. Slammed doors and raised voices, nothing like the full scale battle that would break out if Sam tried to talk about a life after June that still followed the rhythm of school years and semesters.  
  
If he tried to talk about leaving.  
  
So he doesn’t say anything about Peter’s ghost story. Doesn’t say anything about school, or about the friends he might make there, or the girl he thinks he might like.  
  
Most of all, he doesn’t say anything about the letter from Stanford, hidden in a copy of  _To Kill a Mockingbird_  at the bottom of his duffel bag. The one that begins  _I am pleased to offer you admission_  . . . and might as well begin  _I am pleased to offer you a way out_.  
  


* * *

  
  
After the fourth time Clare invites him to join them for lunch, Sam decided that they must really want him there, rather than just feeling like they need to take some pity on the new guy. Maybe it would be have been better, or smarter, to go on eating alone, but he’s tired of that. And it’s different, he tells himself, because this time  _everyone_  is leaving in June. For the first time in his life, he doesn’t have any less time left in a school than any of his classmates do.  
  
Besides, he fits in here. He’s a listener in a group that has all the talkers it can handle, an audience for Peter and Vanessa’s entwined performances, for Jake’s gentle mockeries and Renee’s not quite cruelties. The drama plays out among the four of them. Sam and Clare are asked only to watch and laugh and agree as needed.  
  
“We’re the supernumeraries, you know,” Clare tells him at lunch one day, quietly. Peter and Vanessa are interrupting each other’s accounts of something that happened in their history class. “Like in an opera? Spear bearers and flower girls. We’re the extras.”  
  
A part of him wonders if he should be worried or insulted about being described as an  _extra_ , but he’s not. Because he’s too far distracted by the way she said we, and the fact that she leaned close to tell him.  
  
Clare breaks the edge off a cookie, and holds the rest out so he can break off a piece, too, if he wants. The fact that Sam doesn’t like oatmeal raisin cookies has never mattered less than it matters right now.  
  
His sleeve slips when he reaches out and reveals a dark purple bruise on his forearm. It’s a memento from his last sparring match with Dean and a blow he didn’t dodge quite quickly enough.  
  
“Ow,” says Clare, sympathetically. “Does that hurt as much as it looks like it does?”  
  
Sam pulls his sleeve back down to his wrist and shakes his head. “No. It’s fine.” And that’s true. Bruises rank below cuts and burns, and  _hurt_  is reserved for things that are broken, dislocated, or need to be stitched back together.  
  
“What happened?” Clare asks.  
  
“It’s really nothing,” Sam says. “Just roughhousing with my older brother. Don’t worry about it. It’s fine.”  
  
“Right, Sam?” Renee asks, and Sam shifts his attention back to the main conversation.  
  
“Sorry, what?” he asks.  
  
“I said, you could help us, right, Sam?” Renee says.  
  
“Um, help you with what?” Sam asks. Across the table, Jake shakes his head and mouths  _no_.  
  
“With the prom, of course. We’ll need help decorating, and selling tickets, and getting everything organized . . .”  
  
“Renee is the head of the prom committee,” Vanessa puts in, helpfully.  
  
“Oh,” says Sam. “Wow, um . . . well, I really wish I could, but—”  
  
“So what’s stopping you, if you want to?” Renee asks.  
  
“Come on, Renee, cut it out,” Clare says. “He’s trying to be nice about it, but he doesn’t want to help you hang streamers.”  
  
“He can answer for himself, Clare,” Renee says.  
  
“I can’t, I’m sorry,” Sam says.  
  
“Why not?”  
  
“Jesus, Renee, let it go,” Peter tells her.  
  
“You know, you’re all perfectly happy show up and have a good time, but somebody has to do all the work,” Renee says, glaring up and down the table. She picks up her lunch tray and stomps out of the cafeteria.  
  
“We better go check on her,” Vanessa says.  
  
Clare sighs and hands what’s left of her cookie to Sam. “If we must,” she says, and follows Vanessa after Renee. Sam turns to watch them go – well, to watch Clare go – and so does the security guard by the door, the same one Sam had talked to in the library that day. Sam suspects the administration would not approve of just how obviously he’s checking Clare and Vanessa out as they go past.  
  
“Damn, Sam,” Peter says. “I think someone’s after you.”  
  
Sam startles. It takes him a second to remember that this is the kind of  _after you_  that means  _a girl is interested in you_  and not  _a ghost wants to flay you alive._    
  
“Yeah?” he asks.  
  
“Hell, yeah,” Jake says. “What did you think Renee meant with all that prom committee shit?”  
  
“Probably planning to tie you up with streamers and have her way with you,” Peter says.  
  
“Dude, we’re eating,” Sam says, and the others laugh.  
  
Sam asks them about the baseball team, and how things are going, and then spends the rest of lunch listening to dire predictions about exactly how badly they’re going to get clobbered that afternoon. He finishes the cookie Clare gave him, and decides that maybe oatmeal raisin isn’t that bad, after all.  
  


* * *

  
  
Sam sets his books on the circulation desk, and Clare looks up from whatever she’s doing on the computer.  
  
“Checking them out?” she asks, and Sam, whose eyes had been drifting down the V of her neckline, looks back up to her face hurriedly and guiltily.   
  
“Um, the books, yeah,” he says, and puts his student ID on top of them.   
  
There’s a beep from the computer as she passes the card under the scanner, and then she says, “Oh, hey, happy birthday.” He’s about to ask how she knows it’s his birthday when she adds, “It’s on your record here.”  
  
“Oh,” he says. “Thank you.”  
  
There are three more beeps as she scans the books, and then she slides them back across the counter to him. He starts to take them, but she doesn’t let go. They stand like that, on opposite sides of the circulation desk with their hands on a pile of books, for a second. “Question for you,” Clare says.  
  
“Sure,” Sam says. “I mean, um, what?”  
  
“Would you maybe want to go to the prom with me?”  
  
He wants to go anywhere she likes, really – dinner, ritual human sacrifice, twenty-four hour marathon showing of  _Titanic_.   
  
But (and there is always a  _but_ , for the Winchesters) it’s problematic.  
  
“It’s okay if you don’t,” Clare says, when Sam doesn’t answer. “I just thought I’d ask.”  
  
“No, it’s not that,” he says. “I want to. But, um, it’s um, kind of . . . expensive. And I don’t . . .”  
  
“I don’t care about all the hoopla,” she says. “I mean, if you’re just trying to be a nice guy and let me down easy or whatever, okay. But if that’s really the only problem . . . look, I want to go. And I’d really like to go with you. And I don’t care about the fancy dinner and the flowers and all the nonsense. I don’t care what you wear. And, hey, since I’m the one doing the asking, I’ll get the tickets.”  
  
“I can’t let you do that,” Sam says.  
  
“So maybe we could each buy our own?” Clare suggests. “But I get to take care of dinner.”  
  
“Only if I can drive.”  
  
“All right,” she says. She grins at him. “And . . . was there maybe a ‘yes’ in there somewhere?”  
  
Sam hesitates, because it’s not really just about the money. Dad will object, a lot. Saturday nights are supposed to be for training. And, though it never gets said, Sam has figured out that Dad hates it when Sam wants to do anything too  _normal_.   
  
Well, Dad can deal. Sam is eighteen years old, and he’ll damn well go to the prom if he damn well wants to.   
  
And he damn well wants to.   
  
“There was a ‘yes’ in there, yeah,” he says, and gets rewarded with a dazzling smile.  
  
“Thank you,” Clare says, and it seems oddly formal to be paired with that smile.   
  
“You’re welcome,” Sam says, and starts back to the table where he left his backpack.  
  
“Sam,” Clare calls, when he’s few feet away, and he turns around. She pushes his books a few inches closer to the edge of the counter. “Forget something?”  
  
Sheepish, coloring, he goes back, trying in the two seconds it takes to think of something to say that makes it into a joke. When he gets there, though, he just leans across the counter and kisses her, without thought or plan or preamble.  
  
It’s not his first kiss, but it’s the one he’ll measure the others by for a long time. It’s soft, her lips against his, and her hair when he reaches up to touch it. She smells like some kind of flowers and she tastes of mint – the sweet, light mint of red-striped candies, not the bright tang of toothpaste.  
  
He steps back when the bell shrills through the moment, picks up his books, and grins at her. “Thanks.”  
  
“Any time,” Clare says, flushed and a little breathless. Sam’s feet don’t touch the ground again that afternoon.   
  


* * *

  
  
Telling Dad goes about as well as Sam expected, only worse. Dad yells, and Sam yells back, and Dean hovers on the edges of the fight, trying to smooth things over without taking sides.  
  
Nothing is resolved when Sam leaves for school the next morning, but when he gets home, Dad stiffly tells him that he can go if he wants. Sam wonders what Dean had to do to get that concession, how long and how many words it took. So he just says  _thank you_ , every bit as stiffly, instead of pointing out that he was hardly asking for Dad’s permission; he is eighteen and his Saturday nights are his own.  
  
Dinner is strained, and Sam’s not sorry when Dad leaves immediately after, headed north to look into what might be a poltergeist. Dean carries Dad’s bag out to the truck. There’s no need for him to, really, except that it gives them a couple of minutes of semi-privacy, so they can talk about Sam’s latest insubordination.  
  
A free ride at Stanford –  _Stanford_  – and a date to the prom with a girl who works in the library. Sam can’t imagine what his classmates’ parents would say about John’s problems with his younger son.   
  
He can’t actually hear what Dad and Dean are saying, just the rise and fall and rhythm of their voices, and then the slam of the truck door. It’s only when Sam can’t hear the engine any longer that he hears the front door open, and Dean’s steps down the hall, slow, like he’s trying to stretch out the time he gets to himself before he goes back to being the perfect Winchester son and brother.  
  
“Tell me she’s hot, Sammy,” Dean says, leaned up against the doorframe to their room.  
  
Sam looks up from repacking his duffel bag. “You probably wouldn’t think so,” Sam says. Clare’s not showy enough for Dean’s definition of  _hot_ , at least as Sam understands it. “She’s . . . cute.”  
  
“‘Cute’?” Dean asks, coming into the room.  
  
“Pretty?” Sam offers instead. “And sweet, and smart.” He stops, and grins. “I kissed her.”  
  
“Yeah? How’d that go?” Dean asks, the tension around his eyes finally starting to ease a little.  
  
“It was . . .” Sam hesitates. “It was nice,” he says.  
  
“Sammy, if that’s all you’ve got to say about it, you’re probably doing it wrong.”  
  
“Hey, she didn’t complain,” Sam says. For a moment, he can almost imagine that this is normal for them, being the kind of brothers who talk about girls instead of hand-to-hand tactics.  
  
“Well, yeah, but . . .” whatever Dean was going to say gets lost as he spots the thing Sam has dug out of the bottom of his duffel bag. Dean picks up the plain navy blue sports coat like it’s a bomb or a viper. No, actually, Sam has seen his brother deal with both explosives and snakes, and he has never looked this wary. “What the hell is this, Sammy?”  
  
Sam takes it back from him, and hangs it in the closet. “It’s a jacket.”  
  
“Well, yeah, I can see that,” Dean says. “Why do you have it?”  
  
“I found it at Goodwill a few months ago,” Sam says. “Figured I might need it someday, you know?”  
  
“For what?”  
  
For the day he met with the Stanford alum who did his interview. Which was the reason he bought the jacket, new at Sears, in the first place.   
  
Sam shrugs. “Graduation?” he says. “I don’t know, it was like six bucks and it fit, and I figured it wasn’t a bad thing to have.”  
  
Dean looks like he’s going to ask something else, and then doesn’t. Sam picks up his duffel bag and swings it back into the closet.   
  
“So, you’re not gonna rent a tux?” Dean says.  
  
“Dude, you wore a leather jacket to yours.” Sam says.  
  
“And I looked a hell of a lot cooler than you’re gonna look in that thing,” Dean says, nodding towards the jacket in the closet. “Well, if you ain’t doin’ the tux thing, this should cover things, right?” Dean holds out two crumpled twenty dollar bills.  
  
“Dean, you don’t have to—”  
  
Dean waves off both Sam’s objections and thanks. “Buy her some flowers or something. Chicks go for that kind of shit.”  
  


* * *

  
  
The problem with screaming, really, is that while it indicates that something’s wrong, it doesn’t indicate  _what_. Sam’s been around and through enough to know that some people scream when a cricket lands on their desk (Mr. O’Hare, his first fourth grade teacher). And that others don’t scream when a ghost breaks their arm in three places (Dean, of course).   
  
But you can’t take the chance that something is startled-by-a-cricket screaming when it is, in fact, arm-broken-by-a-ghost screaming, especially when you recognize the voice doing the screaming.   
  
He doesn’t run, but he moves quickly, through the lobby and down the hallway. It’s early yet, because he always gets to school early when Dad’s home, just to be out of the house, and the halls are almost empty.  
  
Vanessa, no longer screaming but rapidly dissolving into great hiccupy sobs, is standing in the doorway to the school newspaper office. She’s the business manager; she sells ad space and oversees the budget and deals with the printer. Sam had been surprised to learn that until he figured out two things about Vanessa. First, that she is not nearly as silly as she pretends to be. And second, that Vanessa is just about impossible to say no to, which makes her a good person to put in charge of selling ads.  
  
“Hey, Vanessa,” he says, carefully. He’s expecting it, sort of, when she all but throws herself into his arms, but it’s still awkward. “Hey, what’s wrong?”  
  
It’s hard to tell with the sobbing and all, but he manages to catch the words, “They’re all gone.” This statement, like the screaming, is one of those things that can apply to everything from Oreos to family members, and requires clarification.   
  
Sam’s trying to figure out how to calm her down enough to get some details, when he feels a hand on his arm, and turns to find Clare. She extricates him from Vanessa’s grasp, takes over the mantra of  _hey, it’s okay_ , and lets Vanessa cry herself out into Clare’s shoulder instead of Sam’s.   
  
“I left them here last night,” Vanessa says. “I did.”  
  
“Left what here?” Sam asks.  
  
“The new issue of the paper,” Clare says. “Right?”  
  
Vanessa nods. “The copies came in yesterday afternoon and I left them here, so I could come in and distribute them early this morning, when Clare could help. And I locked the door before I left, I  _know_  I did, but they’re all gone.”  
  
Clare gets Vanessa into the office and into a chair, keeping up the reassurances whenever Vanessa has to stop talking and breathe.   
  
Sam searches the office, quickly, and then goes back out into the hall. The security guard is leaned up against the lockers about twenty feet away, eating a Hershey’s bar and watching them like the whole thing has been a drama enacted for his amusement.  
  
“Excuse me,” Sam says. “I don’t know how much of all that you heard—”  
  
“It was kind of hard to miss,” the guard says. “But you seemed to have the situation well in hand, if you know what I mean.” He whistles. “Your damsel in distress there is a looker, if a little on the hysterical side. Figured you probably didn’t want my help.”  
  
Sam counts to ten, and reminds himself that the school will really frown upon a student punching the security guard. Vanessa needs her papers back, not her honor defended.   
  
“Right,” Sam says, instead. “Well, okay, I don’t suppose you saw anyone else go into that room, maybe yesterday afternoon or this morning?”  
  
“Just the guy I let in,” the guard says.  
  
“The guy you let in?”  
  
“Yeah, last night. Said he needed to get some stuff and forgot his key, so I let him in.”  
  
Sam counts to twenty, and reminds himself that anything the school would do to him for punching this guy would pale in comparison to what Dad would do to him. “Any chance you remember who he was?”  
  
“Sorry, pal,” the guard says. “All you guys pretty much look the same to me.”  
  


* * *

  
  
By lunch, it’s all over the school that Kevin Zamora has stolen the latest issue of the Bicentennial Herald as a senior prank. Unfortunately, Jake tells Sam, the only proof is the smug smile on the bastard’s face. “And since Kevin would take credit for the sun rising in the east if he thought anyone would give it to him and it would do him any good, that’s not really ‘proof.’”  
  
They’re waiting in a line of mostly guys, to buy their tickets to the prom. The line isn’t that long, but it’s crawling, because Renee is in charge of sales today, and she’s all but interrogating people before she gives them their tickets. She wants to know what they think of the theme, and to ask if they prefer balloons or streamers, and to tell them why they’re wrong if they prefer balloons.  
  
“I’d wait for a day she’s not here,” Jake says, “but I kind of want to, you know, with the paper and all this morning.”  
  
He wants to do something for Vanessa, Sam translates, because Jake will never actually say it. It had taken Sam almost a month to figure out that Vanessa was, in fact, dating Jake and not Peter. And he still can’t say that he gets it, but they seem happy with it, and that’s all that matters, right?  
  
“Well, I’m glad to have someone to stand in line with,” Sam says, as they inch towards Renee’s table.  
  
Renee’s questions for Jake seem to be mostly about what Vanessa is going to wear (“I’m just hoping she won’t try to wear pink again. It’s not a good color for her, really.”) When he’s finally allowed to purchase his tickets, he gives Sam a quick look of apology and a muttered  _good luck_  and escapes into the lunch room.  
  
“Hi, Sam,” Renee says. “It’s twenty-five dollars for one, and forty for two.”  
  
Sam thinks for one misguided moment that he might get to just buy his ticket and go. “Just one, please.”  
  
Renee pauses with her hand on the cashbox. “One?”  
  
“Yeah, one. Thanks.”  
  
“I thought you were taking Clare.”  
  
“I’m going with Clare, yeah,” Sam says. “I have no idea what she’s going to wear, though.”  
  
It seems, though, that Renee is not concerned with Clare’s wardrobe. “Well, if you’re going with Clare, obviously you’ll need two. That’ll be forty dollars.”  
  
“Oh, um, no. We’re each going to buy our own ticket,” Sam says.  
  
“Well, that’s not very gentlemanly of you, now, is it, Sam?”  
  
“Well, no, I guess . . . but . . .”  
  
“Forty dollars,” says Renee.  
  
Sam, slightly dazed, hands over the two twenties Dean gave him, and receives two small rectangles of cream-colored cardstock. “Have a good time at the prom,” Renee tells him. “Next!”  
  
Sam steps away from Renee’s table and promptly runs into Clare.  
  
“I, um,” he starts.  
  
“I heard,” Clare says. “I’m really sorry. You didn’t have to do that and she shouldn’t have made you feel like you did.” Clare flicks a glance that borders on a glare at Renee. “She doesn’t deal well with hearing ‘no.’ But that was an impressive display of sour grapes, even for Renee.”  
  
“It’s okay, I really don’t mind,” Sam says, but Clare gets twenty dollars out of her purse anyway.  
  
“I said I’d pay for my own ticket and I will,” she says. “I’m choosing to look at this as you being smart enough to save us both five dollars.”   
  
Sam’s pretty sure that she reaches up to kiss him then as much for Renee’s benefit as for his.   
  
He’s also pretty sure he doesn’t care, as long as she’s kissing him.


	2. Chapter 2

Dad’s out of town the night of the prom, and whether that’s by chance or design, Sam doesn’t know. He learned along time ago, though, not to fret about dentistry when someone gives you a pony.  
  
That leaves only the final obstacle. Namely, getting the car.  
  
The thing is,  _technically_  the Impala isn’t even really Dean’s. In theory, the three of them have two cars. But in practice, Dad has the truck, Dean has the Impala, and Sam walks a lot.  
  
Dean eventually agrees to let him use the car, but only after a lot of creative threats about what will happen if Sam chips the paint, or messes up the interior, or returns her with an empty gas tank.  
  
“Dean, I promise, I will not let anything happen to the car,” Sam says, and holds his hands out for the keys.   
  
Dean starts to hand them over, then jerks them back again. “And don’t do anything in the backseat I wouldn’t do.”  
  
“What does that leave, exactly? A full-scale production of a Broadway musical?”  
  
Dean raises an eyebrow and waits.   
  
“I promise,” Sam says again, and Dean finally drops the keys into his brother’s hand.  
  
“Jesus, just ask for my soul next time, why don’t you?” Dean says, running one hand over the Impala’s hood.   
  
“’Cause I can’t drive your soul to the prom,” Sam says. “Thanks. You know I won’t let anything happen to her.”  
  
“You better not.” Dean takes starts back toward the house. Sam has the car door open when Dean calls from the front porch, “And don’t even think about changing the radio station!”  
  
Sam suspects that as impressions go, arriving at your date’s house to meet her parents with “Rock Me Like a Hurricane” blaring is probably not a good idea. He waits until he’s out of earshot, and then turns the radio off. (But he doesn’t change the station.)  
  
Clare lives on the outskirts of town, in a small yellow house with an honest-to-goodness white picket fence. Her father opens the door with apologies that Clare is going to be another few minutes. “There’s been some kind of feminine mystery hair crisis upstairs,” he says, shaking Sam’s hand. Mr. Ellison asks him about school and college and curfews and it’s all so . . . normal.  
  
“You must be Sam,” says the woman coming down the stairs. “Well, don’t you look nice? Clare will be right down.”  
  
“Everything’s squared away, then?” Mr. Ellison asks.  
  
“Oh, yes. A couple of bobby pins, a little hairspray, everything’s fine.” She gives Sam a smile and excuses herself to go find her camera. Five seconds later, she calls, “Honey, where do we keep the film?” and Mr. Ellison excuses himself to go help her look.  
  
“Hey.” Sam looks up to the top of the steps and sees Clare.  
  
She’s wearing pale green, and Sam doesn’t know much about dresses, but it’s not as fussy or as, well,  _dressy_  as he was expecting. It suits her, she looks  _good_ , but Sam kind of thinks she’s deliberately picked something that won’t look out of place next to his not-a-tuxedo.  
  
And he wants to thank her for that but he has no idea how, so he just says “Hi,” and “You look incredible,” and “Here, this is for you,” and holds out the plastic box with the corsage in it. (One white rose, for her wrist. He asked Vanessa for help and she ordered it for him.)  
  
“You didn’t have to do that,” she says, but she flushes a little, pleased, and Sam decides that maybe Dean knows what he’s talking about as far as chicks and flowers go.  
  
“Wait, wait, wait,” Mrs. Ellison calls, re-emerging with her camera, and ruining what was shaping up to be a really good moment by staging it. (Though given the whole Kodak moment thing, Sam is really glad Vanessa didn’t order one of the ones he’d have to pin on.)  
  
Mrs. Ellison hauls them around the house and the yard to take “just a few pictures,” and Sam would hate to see what “a lot” looked like. Finally, Clare says  _Mom_  in a tone of mild and fond exasperation that Sam can’t ever imagine using on his father.  
  
“One more,” Mrs. Ellison says, and takes three.  
  
“Dear,” says Mr. Ellison, “they’re going to miss the dance.” And Mrs. Ellison finally puts the camera down.   
  
Mr. Ellison is holding – Sam has to look twice – a picnic basket. “Thank you, Daddy,” Clare says, taking it from him. Sam’s confusion must show on his face, because Clare explains, “I told you I was going to take care of dinner. I thought, I don’t know, picnic in the gazebo in the park . . . it’s way too hokey, isn’t it?”  
  
“I think it sounds perfect,” Sam says, completely honestly.   
  
He doesn’t even care what’s in the basket.  
  


* * *

  
  
They’re a little late (“fashionably late” Clare says) to the actual prom. The basket turns out to contain fried chicken and potato salad and a strawberry pie that Sam thinks Dean would drive two states out of his way for. Sam doesn’t feel any real need to rush through dinner.  
  
He doesn’t see any reason to rush through the part of dessert that isn’t pie, either. He could happily do a thorough study of things like kissing Clare, and the way she shivers and laughs into his neck when he runs his hands over her bare arms and shoulders. He wouldn’t mind knowing exactly how many different ways he can make her say his name, or just figuring out what she’d let him get away with in the backseat of the Impala. And he doesn’t think it would take that much effort to mess up her hair, a few bobby pins and some hairspray not withstanding.   
  
But when she half-sighs and says she guesses they ought to get to the prom already, he doesn’t object, either. There’s always after the prom, too, right?  
  
He doesn’t care for the once over Clare gets from the security guard as they enter the school. He drops his arm protectively across her shoulders and steers her away. Something is wrong with that guy.  
  
Nor does he miss, now that he knows to look for it, the resentment in the look Renee gives Clare as they hand over the cream-colored cardstock bits that let them enter the transformed gym. “I was just about to stop taking tickets,” she tells them. “Glad you could join us.”  
  
“I like your dress,” Clare says in response. Renee looks down at her pink and black dress with a bit of a grimace and barely manages to spit out her thanks. Sam’s not sure why; it seems pretty enough, as dresses go.  
  
The gym is loud and hot and impressively festooned with streamers. The rather incongruous theme chosen by the prom committee (so, Renee), is  _Dust in the Wind_. Renee had given them all some lengthy explanation at lunch one day, about how it would remind them all that their time in high school was fleeting (“Thank God,” Jake put in). And that they needed to remember the transience of life and truly take time to appreciate the moments they could all be together, like the prom.  
  
Jake found it pretentious. Vanessa found it gloomy. Sam just found it stupid, though he was grateful that when Renee discovered classic rock, she didn’t discover Zeppelin, or they’d all be at a _Stairway to Heaven_  prom.   
  
He can also say that of all the times he’s been subjected to the greatest hits of Kansas, he’s never envisioned that particular song (or any of them, really) involving quite so much glitter.  
  
“Awfully sparkly dust,” Clare says, looking around.  
  
“Sam! Clare! There you are,” Vanessa says, arriving with Jake and Peter in tow. “You can settle something for us. Is this Britney or Christina, singing this song?”  
  
“It’s Mandy Moore, actually,” Clare says. Sam’s answer would have been  _hell if I know_ , if he hadn’t been busy noticing that Vanessa’s pink and black dress looks awfully familiar.  
  
“Isn’t that the same dress—” he starts, and both Jake and Peter cut him off.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Well, that explains Renee’s reaction. Vanessa looks a hell of a lot better in it then Renee does.  
  
“Vanessa thinks it’s kind of funny,” Peter says. “Renee is . . . remind me why I asked her to the prom, again.”  
  
“Because you’re a gentleman, and you knew she really wanted a date,” Vanessa says.   
  
“Because Teresa shot you down,” Jake says. “Twice.”  
  
“Ah, yes. I knew there was a reason,” Peter says. “Well, the way I see it, I’m—”  
  
“Come on, Jules,” someone hisses, voice carrying all the more because he’s trying to be quiet. Peter stops talking, and they all turn to look. “It’s not like you’re actually going to make a scene at the prom.”  
  
Kevin and his girlfriend, Juliet, are ten feet away, and in the middle of an argument. Kevin looks more cocksure of himself than Sam would have, faced with an overdressed girl who looks quite as pissed as Juliet does.  
  
“Why the hell not?” she demands, and she’s not even trying to keep her voice down. Even the music seems quieter, as conversations stop and people turn to listen.  
  
“You pathetic bastard,” Juliet says.  
  
“Aw, Jules, chill,” Kevin says, putting a hand on her arm.  
  
Juliet shakes his hand off. “‘ _Chill_ ’? Did you think I was just going to turn another blind eye?  _This time_? You screwed my cousin, you—”  
  
“She’s making it up, Jules. You know I would never—”  
  
“Oh, right,” Juliet says. “Right, she’s making it up. That’s how she knows that your idea of foreplay is  _get ready, here it comes_. But, hey, at least you tell me, because if I didn’t start faking my orgasm right then, I’d never have time to get through it before you were done. Hell, I probably wouldn’t even know that you had started, because it isn’t like you have all that much to work with down there.”  
  
Sam has never in his life heard this many people make this little noise. There’s not a sound in the gym – even the music has stopped. Everyone is watching Juliet and Kevin stare each other down.  
  
And then someone starts laughing. And that’s all it takes. It sets everyone off and someone yells “You go, girl!” The music starts back up, and Sam will never not believe that the DJ didn’t purposely pick “All the Small Things.” Kevin beats the hastiest retreat Sam has ever seen.  
  
Vanessa laughs until she cries, and when she gets enough air to speak again, asks, “Did anyone else find that as deeply satisfying as I did?” No one else says a word, they all just raise their hands.  
  
“Well, if it was small before . . .” Clare says.  
  
“It’ll be in hiding for about six months,” Jake says. “I’d feel sorry for the guy, except that I don’t.”  
  
Vanessa raises a hand to wipe the tears from her eyes, and then says, “Oh, my God, my makeup.”  
  
“You look fine,” Clare says, and Jake leans over to whisper something that makes Vanessa blush scarlet. But Vanessa drags Clare off to help fix damage none of the guys can see, anyway. “It’ll be just a few minutes,” Clare tells Sam. “Get us some punch?”  
  
Sam, waiting in the small crowd at the refreshment table, hears someone say, “I think the jackass had it coming.”  
  
It’s something of a shock to realize that he actually agrees with the security guard for a change.  
  


* * *

  
  
The thing about screaming, when it comes from a girls’ bathroom at a senior prom, is that there are pretty good odds it is hair, makeup, or wardrobe related. But it’s Vanessa again, and Sam and Jake are both moving towards the bathroom before anyone else has quite figured out what’s going on.  
  
They hesitate, though, when they reach the door, because, yeah, okay, Vanessa screamed, but it’s still a girls’ bathroom. And then Vanessa comes out, pale and clutching Clare’s arm.  
  
“I’m telling you, Clare, I  _saw_  it,” Vanessa says.  
  
“I think you need to sit down,” Clare says, and Jake grabs an empty folding chair from the table Renee is no longer manning.   
  
He helps Vanessa into it, and drops back on his heels to crouch next to her. “You okay?” he asks.  
  
There’s a crowd starting to assemble, Peter and Renee pushing their ways to the front of it.  
  
“What the hell happened?” Renee demands.  
  
“I saw it,” Vanessa repeats.  
  
“Saw what, baby?” Jake asks.  
  
“The ghost, of course,” Vanessa says, and rushes on before anyone can say anything. “It was  _awful_ , she looked just like you said she did, Peter. She was all pale and her hair was all feathered and she had this really awful old dress and she was just  _covered_  in blood. It was terrifying. I looked in the mirror to, you know, check my eyeliner, and she was  _right behind_ me. But then I turned around and she was gone. Just  _gone_.” Vanessa reaches out to grab Clare’s arm. “You saw her, too, right?”  
  
Clare shakes her head. “I’m sorry, but no. I didn’t. Maybe it was just a trick of the light,” she suggests. Vanessa looks at Clare like she’s insane.  
  
“Yeah, and maybe someone here just has an overactive imagination,” Renee says.  
  
“I saw her. I really did.”  
  
“Come on, everyone. Let’s go back to the prom,” Renee says, and starts herding people away from Vanessa and back into the gym.  
  
Sam stops Peter. “Hey, that ghost story. Where’d you hear it?”  
  
“From my older sister, Kelly. When she was home at Christmas.”  
  
“Do you know where she heard it?” Sam asks.  
  
“No idea. What does it matter?”  
  
Sam shakes his head. “Nothing. Right. Just wondered.”  
  
“Look,” Peter says, with a glance over at Vanessa, “she probably really does think she saw it. But, in this case, Renee is right. Vanessa has a pretty active imagination, and she’s kind of a drama queen. What’s the alternative? That there really is a ghost in the girls’ bathroom?”  
  


* * *

  
  
It takes Jake and Clare about fifteen minutes, working in tandem, to get Vanessa calmed down. Even then, Vanessa doesn’t want to go back into the prom yet, but Jake says he can take it from here, and Sam and Clare return to the gym.  
  
“Is it cold in here?” Clare asks, sounding slightly puzzled.   
  
It is cold in there, even with all those people crowded into the room. Sam wouldn’t be that surprised to see his breath cloud in front of him. Given the number of girls wearing tuxedo jackets over their dresses, he’s guessing it’s not his imagination.  
  
Sam shrugs out of his blazer and puts it over Clare’s shoulders.   
  
“Thank you,” she says.  
  
“You’re welcome.”   
  
“I guess the A/C is broken,” Clare says. For one brief moment, Sam lets himself believe her. Yes, that’s it, the air conditioning is broken, that’s all it is, because there is no way in hell there is a freakin’ ghost at his freakin’ prom.  
  
And then there’s a flicker of the lights, and some boy band cuts off mid-warble, and Kansas begins explaining that all they are is dust in the wind.  
  
Not. Good.  
  
Renee, hands on her hips, marches across the dance floor to speak with the DJ. Sam moves close enough to hear her (not that it’s all that hard to hear Renee). She’s saying something about not thinking this is funny, and how he has ruined the moment she had planned for that song, and faulty cheap equipment. The DJ apologizes, and the music switches back to bubblegum pop.  
  
For about thirty seconds. And then there’s another flicker, and Kansas starts singing again.  
  
Really. Not. Good.  
  
Renee starts to turn back to the DJ, and is almost crushed when the mirror ball falls from the ceiling.  
  
There’s a collective gasp, and people start moving towards Renee, who is out-screaming that banshee Dad took care of in West Virginia.  
  
Sam looks up at the ceiling. He’s almost certain that she wasn’t anywhere close to being under that thing when it fell.   
  
“Sam?” Clare asks, and he pulls his attention away from the ceiling.  
  
“Would you excuse me?” he says.  
  
“Where are you going?”  
  
“I just need to get something from my car. I’ll be right back.”  
  


* * *

  
  
Okay, so the smart thing to do would be to call Dean, explain everything, and get advice.  
  
The problem with that plan is that Dean would probably insist on showing up to help – or just to take care of it himself – and that leads to  _awkward_  and  _uncomfortable_  and potentially  _bad_. If it leads to  _really bad_ , it also leads to leaving town in a hurry, and there goes graduation and his diploma and Stanford and his whole future.  
  
And then there’s the fact that Dean would be so disappointed that Sam hadn’t looked into the ghost story when he first heard it. Not angry, not the recriminations and accusations that Sam would get from Dad. Just quiet, unspoken disappointment.  
  
Yelling he could have handled, but that he’d rather avoid.   
  
So, smart or not, what Sam does is get rock salt and lock picks from the trunk of the Impala and then let himself into the school library.  
  
It’s kind of a pity he can’t tell Dean about this. His brother would probably get a good laugh out of the fact that Sam snuck away from the prom to do research.   
  
Then again, maybe it’s just as well.  
  
The thing is, even as he’s pulling old yearbooks off the shelves and waiting for the computer to boot up, he still can’t shake the feeling that this is just  _wrong_. If anything like that had actually happened, everyone would know. There’d be a memorial in the school lobby or something. It wouldn’t have been news to everyone when Peter told the story.  
  
Hell, Dad would have known about it before he decided to move them here. Dad  _wouldn’t_  have decided to move them here. There are enough un-haunted high schools in the country, and Dad is big on not hunting where you have to live.  
  
There’s nothing in the yearbooks from the late 1970’s, but that’s not conclusive. Especially when the student was a soon-to-be-graduating senior, it’s not uncommon for yearbooks not to have memorials. And sometimes the family doesn’t want one. He does learn that the Class of 1978 also had  _Dust in the Wind_  as a prom theme, but there’s no mention of anyone taking that to the extreme of actually returning to dust.   
  
The archives section of the local paper’s website offers a cheery but useless, “Page under construction! Check back soon!” He searches the ‘net, but nothing turns up on  _Bicentennial High School_  and  _prom_  and  _suicide_.  
  
Sam checks his watch. If he doesn’t get back soon, Clare is probably going to think that she’s been ditched.  
  
And if there is a ghost at the prom, well, that’s where he needs to be, too.  
  


* * *

  
  
“Sam! There you are,” Clare says, putting a hand on his arm like she’s afraid he’s going to wander away again. And then she says, “Where is it?”  
  
“Where’s what?” Sam asks.  
  
“Whatever you went to your car for,” Clare says.  
  
“Oh, um,” Sam says, and gets saved when there’s another lurch from the sound system, and “Dust in the Wind” starts playing again.  
  
“That’s, like, the sixth time that’s happened,” Clare says.  
  
“Hey, is Renee okay?” Sam asks.  
  
“You mean with the mirror ball and all? Yeah, she’s fine. Not hurt, anyway. But getting seriously pissed about the fact that prom isn’t perfect.”  
  
“Interesting priorities.” Sam turns and watches as a streamer detaches itself from the ceiling and drifts down to land on Renee, interrupting what looks like a lecture she’s giving the security guard on the number of cookies he’s eaten.  
  
Sam turns back to Clare, who has pulled a compact out of her purse and is checking her lipstick. He stops, suddenly, when he catches sight of the reflection in Clare’s tiny mirror, of a blood-soaked 1970’s prom-goer.  
  
He turns to look behind them, though he’s not surprised when he doesn’t see the ghost. The reflection is gone, too, when he looks back at the mirror.  
  
“This makes no sense,” Sam says out loud.   
  
Clare snaps the mirror closed and looks at him. “What? Being that upset about the repeat playing of some gloomy seventies song?”  
  
“No,” Sam says. “Yes. Well . . .”  
  
“Sam?”  
  
It just doesn’t add up. It’s as simple as that. This whole thing is the hunting equivalent of  _2 + 2 = Thursday_. A story that sensational would get widely told. There would be records. He’d know her name by now.  
  
And if her goal is to punish people who are having a good time at the prom, there’s no reason for her to be doing anything to Renee. Even Sam can tell Renee is miserable and has been since long before she showed up in the same dress as her better-looking friend. Vanessa would be the logical target, but there she is, wrapped around her boyfriend and laughing, completely ignored while Renee is struck with another falling streamer.  
  
So for all the cold air and crashed mirror balls, the only logical conclusion is that this is not a haunting.  
  
“Sam? Are you okay?” Clare asks.  
  
If it’s not a ghost, it has to be something else. Or someone else. Someone who’s, what, trying to teach a Renee a lesson? Or just out to enjoy her being miserable at the prom? That makes _some_  sense, and everything bad tonight has happened to or around her.  
  
No, wait. Not everything. Someone else has had a fairly miserable prom night. A bully who got publicly and humiliatingly dumped by his pushover girlfriend.  
  
And there’s one person Sam can think of who has been present for all of it, everything that Kevin and Renee have done, and everything that’s been done to them. Just the one.  
  
“Earth to Sam,” Clare says.  
  
Sam looks down at his prom date, with her remarkable gold-brown eyes and slightly concerned smile. “Hey, you okay?” she asks.  
  
“What the hell are you?”  
  


* * *

  
  
It’s one of those moments when time seems to stop, and Sam doesn’t realize immediately that time has done just that. Everyone and everything in the gym has frozen except him and Clare, still and silent.  
  
“You’re good,” she says, cheerfully, and she sounds different. Older, maybe. “I haven’t been made in over a century.”  
  
Sam gestures to their classmates. He’s in way over his head here, and he knows it. So it’s time to figure out what Dean would do. “Let them go. Now.”  
  
“Relax, Sam. They’ll be fine. I just wanted to talk to you alone for a minute. Well, not exactly a minute, what with time stopped and all, but you get the idea.”  
  
Sam wishes he had any idea what he was dealing with, and some kind of weapon beyond a pocket full of rock salt. “What the hell are you?” he asks again.  
  
“Your kind tends to call us  _tricksters_ ,” Clare says. “I find that term maybe a little judgmental, but we can go with it.”  
  
Sam wracks his brain for information on tricksters, and comes up a couple of half-remembered stories, and the fact that Dad has never faced one. Great.  
  
“My kind?” Sam asks, mostly stalling for more time to think.  
  
“You know, hunters.”  
  
“I’m not a hunter,” Sam says.  
  
“Aren’t you, though?”  
  
“No. I’m a person whose father makes him hunt. But that doesn’t make me a hunter.”  
  
“Sam, what do you think the point of all this was?”  
  
“You wanted to play a trick on Renee,” Sam says. “And Kevin.”  
  
“No, I wanted them to learn lessons. I have . . .  _colleagues_  who like the bigger, bolder, and, frankly, deadlier kind of lesson, but I prefer to find people a little younger, and actually give them a chance to use what they’ve learned, in the real world. It’s like being a teacher. Only without the parent conferences and having to grade papers.”  
  
Sam snorts.   
  
“You’re not convinced. Look, Kevin just needed to be knocked down a peg or two, and Renee will be happier when she learns that she doesn’t control the world around her. Or even need to. But they, Sam, were side projects. Mostly, this lesson was for you.”  
  
“Yeah? And what lesson was that? Check and make sure the girl who’s flirting with me isn’t some kind of monster before I go out with her?”  
  
“Not a bad thing to learn, though I do protest the use of the word  _monster_. But, no.”  
  
“Then what?” Sam asks, and it’s annoyingly hard to keep from sounding hurt. Damn it all, but he really liked her.  
  
“You’ve got this notion, and it’s actually quite charming and quaint, that there’s a ‘normal’ life out there somewhere. I mean, look at our date. The house with the white picket fence, my charmingly involved and enthusiastic constructs of parents, a picnic in a gazebo in a park. The whole thing was something straight out of a ‘50s sitcom, with maybe a bit more making out. Even Donna Reed didn’t live  _The Donna Reed Show_ , Sam.”  
  
She pauses and waits for him to say something, and maybe the fact that she wants him to comment is what keeps him from doing so. Maybe it’s just that he has no idea what to say.   
  
Clare goes on. “But here you have this date, that’s perfect and normal and perfectly normal, or at least what you think of as normal, and where are you? Everyone else in this room thinks it’s a short in the DJ’s equipment and a problem with the A/C. And you’re off sneaking into the library to look up ghosts.”   
  
She leans closer and drops her voice to an intimate whisper, “And is that a pocket full of rock salt, or are you just happy to see me? Rock salt won’t work on me, for the record.”   
  
Sam steps back, fists clenched at his sides. He suspects punching her won’t work, either, but he might try anyway. “So what? You’re just . . . toying with me? This whole time?”  
  
“I’m trying to do you a favor. I like you, Sam. But you need to understand something. You know about the supernatural, and the supernatural knows about you. That never changes. The genie doesn’t go back in the bottle, the toothpaste doesn’t go back in the tube. You’re lying to yourself if you think you can ever get completely away from it.”  
  
“Watch me. I am done with this life in a couple of months. I’m getting out.”  
  
“What you’re doing, Sam, is running. And running does nothing except take you from being the hunter to being the hunted. You can run as far and as fast as that big brain and those long legs will carry you, and it will never be far or fast enough. You might manage to hide from it for a while. But it will catch up to you. It will hunt you down. And when it does, it’s going to hurt like hell.”  
  
Clare looks down at his still clenched fists. “Go ahead and punch me if you want, Sam, though I do have to say you never struck me as the kind of guy who hit girls.”  
  
“You’re not exactly a girl.”  
  
“Close enough. Which you should know; you’ve had your hands all over me tonight.”  
  
Sam doesn’t especially want to be reminded of  _that_. “Well, I’m not interested in you or your lesson. Thanks, anyway.”  
  
“That’s the ironic part. And it might even be actually ironic, not black-fly-in-your-chardonnay ironic.”  
  
“What is?”  
  
“You learned it a little  _too_  well. You saw past the ghostly puppet to the trickster pulling the strings. I was sloppy there, and I guess I learned a lesson about underestimating hunters. And I like you, I do, but not enough to run the risk of getting staked by your dad or Dean. So I’m afraid you are going to have to learn this lesson on your own, because you’re not going to remember any of this.”  
  
She wraps her hands around his neck, so fast it he doesn’t have time to react, pulls his head down, and kisses him.  
  


* * *

  
  
Sam looks down at his prom date, with her remarkable gold-brown eyes and slightly concerned smile. “Hey, you okay?” she asks.  
  
He blinks, momentarily a little lost. Slowly, the noise resolves itself into music and voices, and the motion around them becomes distinct individuals and couples dancing.  
  
“What just happened?” he asks.  
  
“I kissed you,” Clare says. “And I thought it was a good kiss, if I do say so myself, but I didn’t realize it was  _that_  good a kiss.”   
  
“Guess I’m still getting used to kissing you,” he says.  
  
“Maybe you need more instruction in the art of kissing me,” she says.  
  
That sounds promising. “Do you give lessons?”  
  
“Oh, sometimes,” she says, breezily.   
  
Sam leans down to kiss her again. “I’m a very good student,” he says, close to her ear.  
  
“I’m sure,” she says, and he puts his hands at her waist to pull her even closer.  
  
“You there, boy, what do you think you’re doing with her?” someone demands, and Sam has taken a step away from Clare and shoved his hands into his empty pockets before he realizes it was Jake.  
  
“You’re a jerk,” Sam tells him.  
  
“You should have seen your face,” Jake says, laughing.  
  
“I’m sure it was hilarious,” Sam says. “Did you want something?”  
  
“Just saying hello. Getting some punch for Vanessa.”  
  
“Hi. And don’t let us keep you from that,” Sam says.  
  
“Right. Catch you guys later,” Jake says.  
  
Sam turns his attention back to Clare. “So,” she says, “are we going to dance, or what?”  
  
Privately, Sam thinks  _or what_  sounds like it has some intriguing possibilities. But for the moment, he wraps his arms around her waist again. “Sure. Let’s dance.”  
  


* * *

  
  
Sam gets up early on Sunday morning, hours, he suspects, before the most devout of his church-going classmates, a hell of a lot earlier than Dean, and washes the Impala. It’s not dirty; it’s never allowed to sit in the driveway dirty. But Sam wants to do something to say thanks for letting him use the car, and for talking Dad around, and everything. Dean will never let him do something for Dean, but he can wash and wax and detail the car. And they’ll both know why he did it, even though all Dean will say is that Sam never does the wax right.  
  
When he’s done, Sam goes back into the house and brews coffee that’s strong enough to peel not only the wax but the lacquer off the car. He drinks two cups, has breakfast, and changes into running clothes.  
  
Since Dean looks like he’s going to sleep until noon or Armageddon, Sam goes back to the kitchen to turn off the coffee pot and leave a note explaining his absence.  
  
His father is sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, and it’s one of the things Sam has never been able to figure out, how Dad moves that quietly.  
  
Hell, how he  _drives_  that quietly.  
  
“Sammy,” he says.  
  
“Dad.”  
  
There’s a moment. This is a situation Sam knows he’s been working to avoid, and that he suspects Dad has been working to avoid, too. The two of them, alone, with no buffer of Dean.  
  
“How’d it go?” Sam asks.  
  
“It’s dead.” Another moment, too long, and then Dad asks, “How was your dance?”  
  
“It was nice,” Sam says, an answer that’s as inadequate as his father’s was. He rushes on, trying to find something more to say. “I had a good time. It was lots of glittery decorations and punch and stuff. There was a weird thing where the DJ’s equipment kind of glitched and it kept playing Kansas over and over, but, you know, it was . . . nice.”   
  
He’s not sure what he wanted. It’s not like he expected Dad to care about the details, or ask about Clare, or comment on anything, really. He doesn’t even really want to tell Dad any of that stuff, to have it dissected and critiqued.   
  
But he also wants Dad to have more to say than, “Good. You going running?”  
  
Sam bites back all the retorts that crowd into his head because it should be perfectly obvious that he’s going running. “Yes.”  
  
“How far do you think you’ll go?” Dad asks.  
  
On an ordinary Sunday, he’d go five miles. But he’d also have run five the night before. And he hates –  _hates_  – that he can’t tell if Dad’s question is meant to be a challenge or just an inquiry about when to expect him back. He hates that he has to wonder.  
  
“Eight miles, maybe,” Sam says, and he hates that he just added three miles to his planned run because he was afraid to say  _five_.  
  
Dad nods. “Better get on that, then. I’ve got stuff to go over with you and Dean later.”  
  
“Yes, sir.”  
  
Usually, Sam settles quickly into a rhythm, hits his stride and just runs. But it is as bad this morning as it was a few years ago, before he stopped growing quite so quickly. He’s unfocused and awkward, knees and ankles at odds with each other.  
  
And stuck with a thought he can’t place, and can’t shake, that’s chasing itself around his head.  
  
 _You can run as far and as fast as that big brain and those long legs will carry you, and it will never be far or fast enough._


End file.
